Poetry I Like

    I boom-mumble   I bass-blow             I gulf-cross   I listen-talk
    I hull-heavy   I big/slow                        I moon-map   I wave-walk
    I boat-bump   I limpet-skin                  I tail-turn   I time-keep
    I soft-sink   I sky-swim                            I ship-wreck   I song-seek
    I sea-search   I salt-swallow                 I blue-blood   I grumble-sing
     I bone-backed  I fluke-follow    I fish-heart   I dream-king





    IV





      Henry Wadsworth Longfellow



    Click here for a beautiful reading of the poem by Longfellow himself!



    With snow-white veil and garments as of flame,


    She stands before thee, who so long ago


    Filled thy young heart with passion and the woe


    From which thy song and all its splendors came;



    And while with stern rebuke she speaks thy name,


    The ice about thy heart melts as the snow


    On mountain heights, and in swift overflow


    Comes gushing from thy lips in sobs of shame.


    Thou makest full confession; and a gleam,


    As of the dawn on some dark forest cast,



    Seems on thy lifted forehead to increase;


    Lethe and Eunoc--the remembered dream


    And the forgotten sorrow--bring at last


    That perfect pardon which is perfect peace.




    photo by: Allie Crafton

    Nothing Gold Can Stay

    by Robert Frost

    Nature's first green is gold 

    Her hardest hue to hold. 

    Her early leaf's a flower; 

    But only so an hour. 

    Then leaf subsides to leaf. 

    So Eden sank to grief, 

    So dawn goes down to day. 

    Nothing gold can stay.

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    photo by: Julie Parker

    SONNET 116

    Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O no! it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come: Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom.    If this be error and upon me proved,    I never writ, nor no man ever loved.  -- William Shakespeare
    Steve Sara Sausalito Artist

     in just-

      in Just-
      spring       when the world is mud-
      luscious the little
      lame balloonman
      whistles       far       and wee
      and eddieandbill come
      running from marbles and
      piracies and it's
      spring
      when the world is puddle-wonderful
      the queer
      old balloonman whistles
      far       and       wee
      and bettyandisbel come dancing
       from hop-scotch and jump-rope and
      it's
      spring
      and
           the
                   goat-footed
      balloonMan       whistles
      far
      and
      wee
      e.e. cummings 

Sunrise clouds above Lac Blanc, Aiguilles Rouges, Chamonix, France

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things –
   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
      For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
   Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
      And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
      With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
                                Praise him.